Miss Freedom

Kalsang Dickey fled Lhasa to take part in the Miss Tibet contest. Last week,
Manraj Grewal saw her live out her dream.

17 October 2004 (The Indian Express) –
It was a friend from McLeodganj who first told her about the night they
crowned Miss Tibet. About the girl from nowhere who would now represent Tibet
on the world stage.

Imagine the ripples it'll create when she stands up there with Miss China,
he'd said, his hands pointing upwards at an imaginary stage.

Kalsang Dickey, a nurse, dancer and struggling model, couldn't sleep a wink
that night. A month later, in September 2003, she fled Lhasa to pursue her
dream.

Last week, it came true. Dickey, 24, was one of the five contestants at the
Miss Tibet pageant, part of the Free Spirit festival, held at
McLeodganj, the seat of the Tibetan Parliament-in-exile. There were no losers
in the contest where participation itself is an act of courage and the cause
– a free Tibet – the real star.

In 2002, a handful of Tibetan youngsters led by Lobsang Wangyal decided to
take the 36-24-36 route to global attention. A flamboyant 30-something
photojournalist with a flowing mane, Wangyal says the idea took root after he
organised the heady arts fest for young Tibetans in India in October 2000.

"I thought why shouldn't we, the dispossessed, have a beauty pageant as well?
A contest which would give us another platform to fight for our
independence."

Back then, Wangyal's radical idea had few takers. And the Internet
announcement of the contest was met with stern disapproval from none other
than Prime Minister Samdhong Rinpoche, who said the corrupting influence of
the West was to blame.

2002

HITS & MISSES

2002 Dolma Tsering, 19, was the first Miss Tibet. Tsering even got to share
the stage with Miss China at the Miss Tourism Intercontinental Contest
in Malaysia after the event,
where she won the Miss Goodwill subsidiary title and Best National
Costume title in Mexico. Now she's working on an album.

2003 Tsering Kyi, 21, from Amdo in north eastern Tibet, was the winner. Kyi,
who studied in a monastery in Himachal Pradesh, is a budding poet and has a
collection (in Tibetan) to her name.

2004 Tashi Yangchen is a computer engineer who works for the Information
Technology department in Gangtok. The 24-year-old wants to do an
MBA abroad.

Wangyal and his team went ahead anyway. The first Miss Tibet in October 2002
attracted a respectable 30 entries, of which four made it to D-Day.

The next year was a downer, with nine of the 10 participants opting out just
before the contest, mainly due to the swimsuit round. Many prominent Tibetans
say they are not comfortable with the skin show. And even though Wangyal has
kept this round closed to the public right from the start, it continues to be
a sore point.

This time, a small but spirited bunch of five girls gave it a go, watched by,
among others, a camera crew who had specially flown in from Hamburg. And no
one was more thrilled than Dickey. "I never thought I would make it here,"
she says through an interpreter.

Dickey was seven when one night her bickering parents pushed her out into
Lhasa's icy streets. "I was pleading with my father, asking him not to leave
us when ..." She's crying as she tells you how she spent the next few days
begging on the streets, this in a city where the act is considered a crime.
A week later, a local court ordered her mother to take custody of her.

After school, Dickey, a dance enthusiast, did a three-month course at the
Chengdu Institute of Arts, but a fall from a bike quashed her starry plans.
And until the pageant called, life was all about being a nurse.

"I told my parents, who are now divorced and remarried, I wanted to go to
Nepal for a pilgrimage," she smiles. Nepal was only a smokescreen. Dickey was
escaping to India via Kathmandu.

It wasn't easy. For one, she had no travel documents. But a friend from India
helped her tag on to four foreigners crossing the border.

"It was tough," she shudders, recalling the jagged mountains she climbed using
just ropes, and the dense vegetation that sometimes took a swipe at her. "Only
the thought of meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama and participating in the
contest kept me going."

It was afternoon when they finally made the crossing after a hurried and hefty
exchange of money with a sherpa who led them across to Nepal.

Then on, it was a smooth ride. "I called up the local Tibetan reception
centre, which sent a truck to fetch me." Kathmandu was smoky and crowded.
"Quite unlike Lhasa with its spanking new buildings, gleaming roads and
round-the-clock electricity," she says, oblivious to the political
incorrectness of the statement in a place reared on anti-China sentiment.

But Dickey, who worked as a receptionist-cum-errand girl at a local hotel for
4,000 Nepali rupees a month, learnt to like the city. It was at least a step
closer to the Dalai Lama.

The monsoon brought good news. The Miss Tibet contest was on. Dickey persuaded
a friend to fill in the form for her. She also wrote in her secret: She had no
money.

Back in McLeodganj, Wangyal had received not one but two applications from
Nepal. The other one was from Sonam Dickey, a girl who had earlier visited
McLeodganj to do a computer course.

"Lobsang got in touch with the Voice of Asia correspondent in Kathmandu who
gave me Kalsang's phone number," recalls Sonam. It was September 21. A day
later, she called up and met Dickey. Six days on, they were at McLeodganj.
But Dickey's journey was finally made possible by US-based Tsering Yangdon.
A correspondent with Radio Free Asia, Yangdon sent Dickey $300 after an SOS from Wangyal.

"She spoke to me on the phone and told me to buy all that I needed for the
pageant," beams Dickey, flashing a flowery diamante ring. Barring some
anxious moments at the Indo-Nepal border, the three-day Kathmandu-Delhi bus
journey was a happy blur.

"I used to think McLeodganj was a small hamlet perched atop a hill, but it's
so full of energy, big shops, people..."

Among the people were the three other feisty girls who'd come from as far as
Sikkim to be part of the pageant. Tashi Yangchen, a pretty computer engineer
from Gangtok, and a former Ms Fresher at her engineering college in Pune, who
eventually wore the crown of Miss Tibet. Dhondup Wangmo, a customer care
officer with Delhi-based BPO Convergys, was driven by the cause, but easily
embarrassed by any display of vanity. Local girl Thinlay Dolma, who worked
with her uncle at a cloth shop, won many fans with her grace in high heels.

Together the five explored their little kingdom under the watchful eyes of the
Team Lobsang, a group of volunteers dedicated to a free Tibet.

If Kris Majchrzak, the lady who chaperoned beauties at the Miss World contest
in China last year, represented Europe, Lauren Cutcliffe, the emcee, pitched
in for the English, while Sherry Winklemann, the creative director, made up
the American contribution.

Indians played the generous hosts with Sangeeta J, a former beauty advisor for
Miss India pageants, not only grooming the girls, but also liaisoning with the
judges. A local resort did its bit by putting the participants up.

Dickey was impressed, happy and at peace. She prayed at Nechung monastery,
took a leisurely tour of Parliament where Dolma Gyari, deputy speaker,
declared them all winners, and basked in the beauty of Norbulingka, the centre
for Tibetan arts, swinging to Thaiyan Thaiyan (Chhaiyan, Chhaiyan), or
crooning Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai.

Miss Tibet 2004 turned out to be fun. She got to walk a la Preity Zinta, her
favourite actress, in a lilac swimsuit. "I was a little edgy at first, but it
was fine after a while."

In the final round, Dickey wore a slinky pink gown topped with a fur hat.
And one of the judges told her she'd narrowly missed the crown.

The contest over, she's busy packing. "I'll go back to Lhasa after meeting
His Holiness," she says. Ask her if she fears being put behind bars and she
shrugs: "So what? That will only help me spread my message. I've lived my
dream, I am ready to pay the price."